Τετάρτη, Δεκεμβρίου 04, 2013

The
Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford and the Biblioteca
Apostolica Vaticana (Vatican Library) have joined efforts in a landmark
digitization project with the aim of opening up their repositories of
ancient texts. Over the course of the next four years, 1.5 million pages
from their remarkable collections will be made freely available online
to researchers and to the general public.
The initiative has been made possible by a £2 million award from the
Polonsky Foundation. Dr Leonard Polonsky, who is committed to
democratizing access to information, sees the increase of digital access
to these two library collections — among the greatest in the world — as
a significant step in sharing intellectual resources on a global scale.

Dr Polonsky said: ‘Twenty-first-century technology provides the
opportunity for collaborations between cultural institutions in the way
they manage, disseminate and make available for research the
information, knowledge and expertise they hold. I am pleased to support
this exciting new project where the Bodleian Libraries and the
Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana will make important collections
accessible to scholars and the general public worldwide.’

The digitization project will focus on three main groups of texts:
Hebrew manuscripts, Greek manuscripts, and incunabula, or 15th-century
printed books. These groups have been chosen for their scholarly
importance and for the strength of their collections in both libraries,
and they will include both religious and secular texts. For the launch
of the project, however, the two libraries have focused on bringing to
light a smaller group of Bibles and biblical commentaries, each of which
has been chosen for its particular historical importance.